Saturday, February 11, 2017

March writing activities are a lot of fun because the topics are exciting - kids love writing about leprechauns, pots of gold, and coming up with wishes of their own! I wanted to show you some of my favorite March writing prompts and some other fun stuff.

Well, of course I love NO PREP crafts since you simply print them and kids just write, color, cut, and glue. Anything no prep is my favorite. :) I’ve shown you many of my other no prep writing activities by month. I have a massive bundle of them or you can get just the March Writing crafts I show on this post too!

There are just so many creative writing opportunities for March! One of my favorite St. Patrick’s Day writing prompts is “If a Leprechaun Rode the Bus.”

This one is so fun to brainstorm and think of all the silly things that could happen if a leprechaun rode the bus to school with them.

You can also do “If a Leprechaun Came to School” to think of all the fun things a leprechaun would do in class. Would they do math centers with you? Swing on the swings at recess? Leave green footprints by the teacher’s desk? Again, a super fun one to brainstorm then have them write their own stories!

Kids also love to talk about what they’d do with a pot of gold! Have kids imagine they found the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow and imagine what they’d do with it. You may get some funny answers and also heartwarming ones... and then just plain silly.

Along the same lines, have kids imagine they caught a leprechaun and were granted 3 wishes! This writing prompt is a GREAT excuse to practice First, Next, Last in their writing to list their 3 wishes.

I try to sneak in specific writing skills like that in my writing no prep packs so that, even though it just looks like crafts, they’re practicing skills in the writing standards.

For example, “How to” writing is an important standard so have them write about how to catch a leprechaun!

You could even do a project where students have to work together to construct a leprechaun trap! This is a really common activity in classrooms for St. Patrick’s Day so if you do a little searching, you’ll find some inspiration!

Another writing genre you can practice is nonfiction writing. March is a perfect month for learning about weather and rainbows. Students can then write what they’ve learned about rainbows.

You can also have them write a nonfiction piece about the holiday of St. Patrick’s Day if you want more nonfiction writing practice OR have them write a narrative of how they normally celebrate St. Patrick’s Day using this simple craft.

All of these make really fast and easy St. Patrick’s Day bulletin boards. You could make your bulletin board all the same prompt OR pick each students’ best one from the different prompts to make a really diverse, colorful bulletin board. I love to let kids pick the color construction paper they use as the background so they end up being a really colorful display on a bulletin board like this:

That’s actually one of the biggest reasons I created these no prep crafts – keeping up with seasonal bulletin boards used to be such a hassle but having quick writing crafts that look nice and are easy to do has made it so much less stressful.

I’m also a perfectionist so I love how they’re on construction paper so I can make them perfectly straight and evenly spaced since they’re all the exact same shape – is that crazy?! :)

I LOVE switching out behavior charts each month (or even more often if you do different themes) to keep it fresh and exciting! As I’m sure you know, a lot of behavior management tricks work great BUT stop working after a bit of time when kids get bored with them. In my opinion, this is the case for behavior clip charts UNLESS you change them regularly! I talk about how I do this on my 20 Classroom Management Strategies You Can Start Right Away post and let me tell you, it’s a game changer!

When the chart changes and they’re fun and new with a new goal (this one is to get to the top of the chart to find the pot of gold!), kids get excited to reach the new goal and get the new type of award certificate to show their parents! The colors stay the same so you don’t have to explain the new chart – just switch it out and they’ll freak out excitedly when they come in that morning and see the new one. :) It’s my favorite!

Since it’s St. Patrick’s Day and they reached the pot of gold, I love to give out those gold coin chocolates if they reach the top. EEEEEVERYONE wants that chocolate... especially me! :)

Speaking of pots of gold, this is the time of year when you’ve taught your kiddos a lot of different phonics sounds and you want to reinforce them. Bossy R sounds (or, ar, er, ir, ur) seem to be especially tricky so I made Bossy R Pot of Gold centers to review those sounds.

Kids simply match the coins with picture words to the R controlled vowel sound pots. It’s great practice because they have to look at the picture, say the word out loud, then match it to the written form of the sound it contains. This is me laminating them with my BFF, Lammy (my personal laminator). I like to laminate centers at home so I can do it while zoning out watching T.V. :)

It can also get competitive with the roll and cover type version where partners take turns rolling the dice then covering the picture with THEIR color cube. Whoever gets a full line first wins! :)

If you want to see more word rolls, check out this post I wrote a few years ago: CVC Word Rolls

I also love to bust out the letter bottle caps for the Bossy R Bottle Cap cards. If you’ve never seen my bottle cap cards, I wrote a blog post showing my CVC ones here: Bottle Cap CVC Word Building Centers. It shows how the different phonics sets are differentiated and just how to use them in general. Prepare to drink a lot of water! :)

I have bottle cap centers sets for all the different phonics sounds since they’re such an easy way to practice.

Whatever sound you’re working on, kids take the puzzle (the pictures are out of order) and read the reading passage. Then, they highlight the words with the phonics sound you’re focusing on (in this case: OR). Next, they sequence the events of the story by putting the pictures in order to complete the puzzle. Last, they read the puzzle again and write down the highlighted words at the bottom. You can also have them read their completed puzzles and compare with a friend!

Anyway! I could go on and on about bossy R activities – I love teaching phonics.

Kids get a blank 100 chart and a stack of base 10 cards. You can see them on the left hand side of the above picture. They look at the base 10 blocks on each card and figure out what number it is. Then, they color that number the color of the card on their 100 chart to reveal a picture!

I also recently added number cards to all my 100 Chart Puzzles too which you can see on the right hand side of the picture above. You can do either the base 10 cards OR the number cards OR mix & match them if you wish. There's a full set of each so you can use them however you wish.

In order to keep the cards together, I laminate the cards and put them on a binder ring so they’re an easy grab and go center. I showed an example with my butterfly place value on my Instagram here:Butterfly 100 Chart Video

I love using binder rings for all sorts of things – to see the binder rings I use, they’re on this post with some other fun things:Must Have Classroom Supplies

I am crafting a bunch of blog posts coming up of awesome teacher tips and tricks so make sure you are following this blog! If you go to the right hand side of this page, you can sign up in 2 different places to get emails from me AND to have my blog posts emailed to you – make sure you sign up for both! :)